Bowe Bergdahl

Bill O'Reilly and Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer reported tonight on Fox News on a 2009 NCIS report on Bowe Bergdahl's alleged attempts to go "over to the other side" :

"In 2009, the Naval Criminal Investigative Agency (NCIS) filed a report on Bergdahl's activities in Afghanistan. The NCIS, considered the military's best investigative agency, became involved in the case once Bergdahl went missing on June 30th of that year, 2009. The NCIS report cited some very disturbing information," reported O'Reilly before welcoming Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer.

"The headline is, this is what's behind the Article 99 misbehavior charge [which Bergdahl faces]," said Shaffer. "Essentially there is clear evidence that he was 'going over to the other side,' and he had a deliberate plan. There is two different strings here, Bill, that go off. First, one of the strings says he was going to go off to Uzbekistan. He had made contacts with the local Afghans and wanted to be moved to Uzbekistan and then made contact with the Russians because he wanted to talk to Russian organized crime. The other thread says that he did move out with a purpose, he had Afghan contacts, and he was actually trying to offer himself up to the Taliban. Both are very severe. And let me be very clear. This came from the NCIS doing computer forensics on his computer, through both detailed debriefings of his platoon mates and as well as going outside the wire. And God bless NCIS, went outside the wire, tracked down the Afghans he had contact with. So those three sources."

The United States Army has charged Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and "misbehavior before the enemy." Bergdahl allegedly abandoned his post in Afghanistan and was held captive by Taliban-aligned forces for nearly five years before the Obama administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban forces.

Bowe Bergdahl, the American soldier held captive in Afghanistan by Taliban-affiliated terrorists for nearly five years, will be charged with desertion. Bergdahl was returned to the United States last year in exchange for five Taliban commanders being held at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Raf Sanchez at the Telegraph reports on Twitter:

CNN’s Barbara Starr reports that the U.S. military and intelligence community thinks that one member of the so-called Taliban Five “has attempted to return to militant activity from his current location in Qatar.” Officials aren’t saying which one of the five Taliban leaders, who were held at Guantanamo before being transferred to Qatar last year, has fallen under suspicion. But the U.S. has been monitoring their communications and one of the five has “reached out” to other jihadists.

The Taliban Five are even worse than you’ve heard.

One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban’s army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his detention at Guantánamo, did not have a hand in planning the actual 9/11 hijackings. Along with a notorious al Qaeda leader, however, Fazl did help coordinate a military offensive against the enemies of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan the day before.

But Hagel says Obama "made the ultimate decision."

The last question asked at Monday night's closed-door briefing of members of the House of Representatives was a simple one: Who made the decision to transfer five top Taliban officials held at Guantanamo Bay to Qatar in exchange for the return of the Taliban's lone American POW, Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl?

According to Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services committee, the Obama administration's briefers told the gathered House members that the person responsible for the decision to make the deal was not President Obama but Chuck Hagel, the secretary of defense.

A spokeswoman for the State Department referred to the Taliban operatives released from Guantanamo Bay as part of the deal to retrieve Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl as "gentlemen." In a Monday afternoon appearance with Andrew Mitchell on MSNBC, Marie Harf, the deputy spokesperson at State and an alumna of the Obama campaign, argued with Mitchell over the question of whether or not Congress should have ben notified about the exchange before it occured.

Three years ago, Obama went to court to keep a Taliban leader at Gitmo. Now he's out.

While some top Obama administration officials are downplaying threats posed the five senior Taliban officials released from Guantanamo in the prisoner exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, not long ago the administration went to court to prevent one of those men from going free.